Police lined up as protesters shut down Interstate 94 on Saturday in St. Paul. Some say a course called ‘The Bulletproof Warrior’ can lead police officers to feel threatened all the time.Credit
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota police officer who fatally shot an African-American man during a traffic stop last week had recently undergone specialized training that critics say can lead officers to believe they are under constant threat of being harmed and can intensify encounters with civilians.

The officer, Jeronimo Yanez, of the Police Department in St. Anthony, Minn., shot and killed Philando Castile after a traffic stop in nearby Falcon Heights, Minn., on July 6. The shooting is being investigated by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The Justice Department has said it is monitoring the case.

Policing tactics have been under heightened scrutiny since the fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, in August 2014. The police officer in that encounter was not indicted but the department was sharply criticized for its tactics in a report by the Justice Department.

Since then, many police departments across the country, with encouragement from the Justice Department, have opted for what they refer to as a guardian mentality, in which de-escalation of potentially violent situations and similar techniques are emphasized.

Officer Yanez underwent a two-day training course called “The Bulletproof Warrior” in May 2014, according to records from the City of St. Anthony, a suburb near St. Paul. The training combined the two approaches.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune first reported that Officer Yanez took the course. It was conducted by a company called Calibre Press in Glen Ellyn, Ill., owned by Jim Glennon, a former police lieutenant in Lombard, Ill., according to its website.

Mr. Glennon said in an interview that the main focus of the course was to teach police officers to maintain a sense of flexibility in their work, which he calls “balance,” and involves when to use force and at what level, given the circumstances. He said the course did not teach officers to have a warrior mentality.

“There’s no cookie-cutter approach to this — that’s what we teach,” he said. “We tell them that they have a three to four times greater chance of dropping dead from a heart attack than from being shot by a felon with a gun.”

An image from the video posted on Facebook by Diamond Reynolds that shows the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile. The officer holding the gun, Jeronimo Yanez, had police training that some have criticized.Credit
Diamond Reynolds, via Facebook

But critics of the seminars say that the training offered, which includes watching videos showing officers being shot, runs counter to the reforms departments must adopt if they are to win back trust, especially of black residents.

“Courses like this reinforce the thinking that everyone is out to get police officers,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a research and policy organization based in Washington. “This teaches officers, ‘If you hesitate, you could lose your life.’ It is the exact opposite of the way many police chiefs are going.”

The “Bulletproof Warrior” booklet handed out at the company’s seminars addresses warfare as much as police work. A copy of the booklet was obtained by The New York Times. It has charts and graphs on “Combat Efficiency” and “Perceptual Distortions in Combat.”

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The booklet portrays a world of constant and increased threat to officers, despite more than two decades of declining violent crime in the United States, and the fact that the last few years have been among the safest to be an American police officer.

One section is titled “Pre-attack Indicators.” It says, “Unfortunately, the will to survive is all too often trained out of the psyches of our police officers,” and warns of “predators” and “adversaries” who are younger than officers and who have “been in more gunfights and violent encounters.” It advises: “An attack on you is a violent act! What is the only way to overcome that violence?”

Mr. Glennon said the videos of police officers being shot “in the blink of an eye,” are interrupted frequently for analysis, and are limited to about one hour of the 12-hour training seminar.

“If I sit down a bunch of kids showing hours of cops getting killed during traffic stops, they’re going to think they’re going to get killed during a traffic stop,” he said. “So we don’t do that. We talk about it.” One portion of the course shows officers acting improperly and another part discusses how better to handle stress, he said.

“I wished we had called the class ‘Balance,’” he said.

The seminar’s booklet offers ways to determine if someone is lying, based on factors like eye contact, blinking, posture and the use of certain phrases.

Another booklet distributed at seminars, “Anatomy of Force Incidents,” repeatedly makes the point that officers are allowed to — and need to — use more force than they may believe, and to use it pre-emptively. “Myth: The officer must use the minimal amount of force necessary to affect their lawful law enforcement objectives,” it says, and “Myth: An officer must use the ‘least intrusive’ or ‘best’ option when using force.”

The fatal shooting of Mr. Castile captured widespread attention because Diamond Reynolds, Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, streamed its aftermath on Facebook Live, calmly narrating what had happened and panning her camera phone to show Mr. Castile slumped in the driver’s seat, his white T-shirt soaked with blood.

The shooting came during a week in which another African-American man, Alton Sterling, was fatally shot by a police officer in Baton Rouge, La., and five Dallas police officers were killed during an ambush by an African-American Army veteran who told the police that he was seeking revenge for the earlier shootings.

The deaths laid bare the gap in perceptions between some whites and some African-Americans when it comes to the fairness and quality of policing in local departments across the nation, with some African-Americans having long complained about police brutality, including unnecessary shootings by some of the police.

Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting from New York and Matt Apuzzo from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on July 15, 2016, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Bulletproof Warrior’ Course Brings Scrutiny in Minnesota. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe